“Wow, this whole low mountain is today’s filming location?”
“Yes. You have no idea how much we sweated trying to secure this place. Haha.”
The PD said it jokingly, but everyone here knew it was true.
After checking the reaction to the broadcast last night, they had only a short window to find today’s item, so they could only start calling to secure a location in the morning, and that was why the filming time had been pushed back.
Thinking of Cheonghyeon, who had been sunk in gloom all morning, it was truly fortunate for East.
If, like last time, they had installed cameras in the dorm from dawn, the broadcast would have become an uncontrollable mess.
“Alright! During the last shoot, we had a time where you wrote down what you wanted to do. Do you all remember what you wrote?”
“Yes! Survival! Dududududu-.”
As Yoonwoo shouted in an excited voice, miming firing a gun, all the members smiled.
In truth, what they had written last time was a guerrilla date with fans, but it would be changed to “survival” for the broadcast.
The way Yoonwoo smoothly set the narrative as if survival had been what the members wanted in the first place was impressively shameless.
“Yes, that’s right. Today, we also invited a special guest. Now, please come on out!”
A special guest?
Who would come as a guest on an idol reality show?
As the members tilted their heads in confusion, four men with sturdy builds walked out from among the staff.
“Alright, these gentlemen are our country’s proud Special Forces. From the left: Staff Sergeant Choi Junggi, Staff Sergeant Kim Yoon, Sergeant Lee Younghwan, and Sergeant Kang Gyeongjun. Special Forces versus East, East versus Special Forces! We’ll be doing today’s survival game as a team match!”
“What? Isn’t that way too unfair for us? We only have one person who’s even been to the military!”
At Yoonwoo’s words, Cheonghyeon broke out in a cold sweat.
I didn’t do my service…! There are four of us here who haven’t…!
The sudden weight of reality had long since chased away his gloom.
You said you put in all the general knowledge, so why didn’t you put in military knowledge?
He forced himself to calm his pounding heart and looked toward the production team, and Changsik was also looking at him with a pale face.
When Changsik shook his head back and forth as if to say he hadn’t known either, a sigh escaped him again.
Ignoring the members’ protests, the staff calmly handed out the guns.
A survival game gun made to resemble a real firearm, fairly heavy, was placed into the members’ arms.
“Oh.”
Yoonwoo, apparently fascinated, touched it here and there and let out a sound of admiration.
“Cheonghyeon, you’re used to this, right? It hasn’t even been long since you were discharged.”
At the PD’s words, Cheonghyeon hesitated, unsure how to respond, and at that moment the youngest assistant director handed out protective goggles one by one.
Cheonghyeon took the goggles and naturally ignored what the PD had said.
Looking closely, there was nothing significantly different from the guns used in the empire.
If you took apart the internal structure, of course it would be different, but the parts where you loaded the rounds and pulled the trigger to make it function were not all that different.
In any world, the principles of shooting that originated from the slingshot would not differ much.
Cheonghyeon felt his mind lighten.
Besides, if they were filming an idol reality show, it would be far more absurd to hand the cast some enormous military weapon.
Cheonghyeon smiled lightly as he turned the gun over in his hands.
“Alright, could everyone turn around?”
When they turned at the PD’s words, four human silhouette targets were lined up in a row.
They were not wide rectangles, but roughly the size of an actual person, so they looked harder to hit.
“Try shooting once each. Ah, and these aren’t BB pellets, they’re paintballs, so even if you get hit you won’t be hurt, and it’s water based, so it comes right off in the wash. So don’t worry too much.”
When Yoonwoo, with an excited face, asked, “Can I shoot right now?!” the PD smiled and nodded as if to say he could shoot as much as he wanted.
Clack, chkrrk-. Click-!
Cheonghyeon, who had been carefully handling the gun, inserted the magazine and then lightly fired an aimed shot.
The left chest of the human silhouette target bloomed yellow.
The rubber round filled with paint popped with a thump right around the heart.
“Whoa! Cheonghyeon hyung!”
“Oh, as expected, someone who did military service is different?”
Even the Special Forces soldiers watching from a bit farther away looked a little surprised, smiling as they clapped.
Cheonghyeon, for no reason, felt embarrassed.
The paint popping rubber rounds were obviously made for students or ordinary people, yet they applauded as if he had accomplished something remarkable, and he could not lift his reddening face.
Thinking that his petty skill would be exposed to the whole world in the survival game to come made him feel even more embarrassed.
He had never received proper practical military training.
He was confident in shooting a bow or a gun while standing still, but he did not have confidence in moving swiftly while accurately hitting targets.
Still, Cheonghyeon was not about to refuse praise.
With a shy face, he savored the compliments pouring in.
“From now on, we’ll hand out one map each to the Special Forces and to East. If you look there, the terrain and the locations of treasures and flags are marked. The team that pulls out the other team’s flag first wins. But if it’s just a simple mission to steal the flag, then of course East would be at a disadvantage, right? And it wouldn’t be fun either.”
The members hurriedly nodded.
Even if they fought just the single biggest Special Forces soldier standing at the very end, it was unclear whether they could win.
But there were four people with similar builds.
It was far too unfavorable for them.
“Alright, take the papers I’m handing out now and read them.”
- The game begins the moment the flags are planted in each camp.
- As soon as the game starts, bullets and rations will come in through the supply route. At this time, one person from the attack unit must come out to receive the supplies. This is called the “supply unit.” After receiving the supplies, the “supply unit” becomes the “attack unit” again.
- The attack unit and the supply unit cannot attack each other. However, supply units can attack each other only before receiving supplies.
- No more than two people may guard the main base where the flag is planted.
- The attack unit and the defense unit must rotate once every 30 minutes.
- The defense unit guards treasure or the flag. The defense unit cannot pull out the flag.
- In each camp, three treasures are buried. If all of those treasures are looted, you lose even if you are guarding your flag.
- If you are hit by a bullet, you cannot move for five minutes. While “wounded,” you may only communicate by radio with the production team, and you cannot radio your own team.
“Ooh.”
Starting with Yoonwoo’s admiring exclamation, when all the members looked at the PD with sparkling eyes, the PD answered with a smug shrug.
“What’s the most important thing in war? Supplies, right, supplies! If you lose all your treasures before your flag is taken, then of course you lose. In war, there are all kinds of ways to win. Alright, now hold a strategy meeting in your own camp for ten minutes!”
Huddled together in their own tent, East stared blankly at the map.
If it were just a game of pulling the flag, it might have been less fun, but with all these rules added, the members’ competitive spirit had been stirred.
Still, that was as far as it went.
Looking closely, adding rules did not actually make things any more favorable for them.
It just made the ways they could lose more varied.
“Ah, can we even win this? What if we just cut our flag into three pieces and hide them where the treasures are?”
“Then the flag would already be pulled, so we’d lose the moment we start.”
“Ohh.”
At Yoonwoo and Sikyung’s comedy routine, even the cameramen filming them snickered.
Seeing that, Yoonwoo went up to the cameraman and clung to him cutely, saying, “Director, didn’t you say you served in the Marines? Please help us!”
Perhaps because they were already convinced they would lose, East’s tent had no tension at all, peaceful to the core.
Yoonwoo was now fully leaning into his variety show instincts to pull screen time.
The members’ flailing, preparing to lose from the start, was impossible not to laugh at.
“First, here’s what I think.”
Cheonghyeon, who had been laughing along, stared intently at the map and opened his mouth, and everyone looked at him.
Cheonghyeon gave a light, unnecessary cough and continued.
“There are two big ways to win this game. Taking the flag, and looting all the treasures. And I think, on the Special Forces team, one person will stay to guard their tent, and three will come into our camp to take our flag.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they’re Special Forces. Not just anyone who finished their service, but Special Forces. They’ll definitely want to show how overwhelmingly they can beat us. They’ll want to show they’re clearly different from ordinary people.”
If they were appearing on broadcast, they were probably people who cared at least somewhat about how they came across.
And if you added the competitive spirit that comes naturally to people trained in martial skills, they would strongly crave showing off something flashy and overwhelming.
As Cheonghyeon spoke with that nuance, the members nodded.
It made a lot of sense.
“Then what do we do now?”
“We have to show them that we’re the protagonists of this reality show.”
When the strategy meeting time ended, the two teams gathered again in one place.
The moment they carried the flags installed at headquarters and planted them in their respective camps, the game would begin.
When the production team handed out protective goggles, bulletproof vests, and leather gloves with the finger sections open, tension spread through the air.
The game began.
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